


Loyalty

by Mooyork



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-07-24 11:34:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16174244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mooyork/pseuds/Mooyork
Summary: Odin was a ruler for a reason, something that Sigyn knew far too well. He wasn't the loving father Thor knew. He was the conqueror that Sigyn knew. He was the somewhat absent father that Loki knew.Essentially: The story of how Sigyn and Loki came together if Sigyn had hardcore authority issues and a deep desire to bash Odin over the head.(Not a one shot: will turn into a multi-chapter work eventually, I'm just struggling through college so please give me time)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My second time writing anything. Please give any constructive criticism, I need help.  
> Also: I do not own anything except my interpretation of Sigyn and sections of the plot. Most everything belongs to MARVEL.

_You will pledge your loyalty to me—to Asgard. If you do so…I will be merciful._

A lie.

The All-Father—no, Odin—he didn’t deserve the title. He was a liar.

My mother had been the first to succumb to his “mercy.” A babe—my little brother—in her bleeding arms she had fallen to her knees in the mud that was red with our fathers’ and brothers’ and sons’ blood and begged for her life. Begged for my life. Begged for the lives of the women and children. Begged for his mercy—the mercy of a kind and loving All-Father.

He gave the last of my family his mercy.

It was the mercy of a king with blood on his hands—the arrogance that comes with assuming you are the ultimate and only power.

His ornate golden spear went through my brother and her chest with a sickening crunch. I didn’t understand death at the time—I didn’t understand the finality of it. I thought a healer would come along and make my mother wake up and start saying things to me again and start smiling again. I thought my brother would open up his blue eyes—our father’s eyes—and start crying the same way he did when he wanted milk.

Yes, I hated Odin.

Hated Asgard.

Hated my fellow Aesir.

I kneeled and prayed for the same mercy that was shown to my mother in his hallowed gold throne room—

I prayed that he would impale me—a child no older than his own—and leave the cheering Aesir blanching at his true nature. Yes, the other Aesir cheered as a small fraction of my village—the ones who looked the most pleasing to the eye, the least beaten, the women and children—was paraded into Odin’s mighty throne room and kneeled at his feet.

He gave us his royal pardon—how gracious of him. How gracious of the mighty, wise, and kind All-Father to smile down on us with his one good eye and pardon the small farming village that had protested his increased taxes. How nice of him to excuse us of the crime of wanting enough food to survive a winter.

“Will the orphans of this town please come forwards.”

 _Please_ —as if we had a choice.

I stepped forward along with two other girls and a boy—they’d killed a lot of the boys. The boys could become fighters—killers—there was the underlying fear that the boys may just grown up and kill them.

I wanted the last boy—a blonde meek one I’d never bothered to talk to—to kill Odin. I wanted him to raise Odin’s head aloft and watch the other Aesir scream as we had when our parents were killed in front of us.

I wanted them to _hurt_.

My grimy feet—the soles still bleeding and cracked smudged the pristine floor. It was clear enough to see my reflection in—no doubt polished for this glorious spectacle—the great All-Father bestowing his great kindness to us poor children. How dare he smile comfortingly at me when he left my life bleeding into the trodden dirt?

His massive golden throne winged out impressively on either side of him. His wife, Frigga, stood serenely to his right in a resplendent blue dress looking every inch the noble Asgardian woman she was expected to be—groomed to be. How could she look so happy when she was married to a murderer? His two sons stood next to their mother—one golden and large like every hero of old, and one sleek and black-haired, who stood with an eerie grace to match his mother’s. It was easy to tell which child took after which parent.

Did these boys know that their father’s throne was built up on the corpses of my family? Of countless families. Did they care? Were they like him?

The blonde one was.

“These children have been left alone by the conflict, fortunately there are not many of them.” The gathered righteous Aesir all nodded their heads and murmured sympathetically down at me. There were even a few mutters of “poor dears.”

I fought the urge to sneer.

A girl in a tattered green dress next to me—I happened to know that the dress had been provided by the royal family and then tattered to look as though it had been through the battle, something about feminine little girls being a more sympathetic spectacle—let out a chocked sob.

The reason there weren’t more of us was because we had been killed—anyone old enough to start looking like an adult had been slain. The rest of us were still malleable enough to put into the royal household and train.

“I have decided the let them live in my house—to have jobs and the ability to make themselves a livelihood here. They will be educated and provided for by my family.”

A loud thunder of applause filled the throne room, a few of the more zealous warriors in front—their barrel chests pushed out proudly in their armor—whooped in approval of this merciful decision. I recognized one of them as the one who ran down the butcher and laughed while he did it.

Two guards in full ceremonial gear stepped forward—their spears were eerily similar to the one which had plunged through my mother and brother. They beckoned to us and we followed—what a sorry little sight we were—our feet trailing blood and dirt, our clothes tattered. It was all for show. No doubt in a month Odin would parade us out when we were fed to show his subjects the “good” he had done us.

The hall we were led into was a carved stone—no gold plating here. These were servants’ corridors.

An education in the All-Fathers home was not learning how to read and write—it was a literacy in cleaning supplies. We were to be free labor—prisoners with jobs if you felt the need to beat around the bush—slaves if you didn’t.

I shivered as the girl in the green dress continued sobbing. The boy looked like he might cry too. The other girl said nothing and looked at nothing—she’d been like that for days. Strangely, it hadn’t been the deaths of her parents that had caused it, according to the boy it was the death of her dog that did it.

It was freezing, and it probably would be year-round. There were no great braziers to suggest that us servants would be afforded warmth in the winter. One of the guards had lit a torch at some point and he was now heading down the hall into an impenetrable blackness with his friend.

Shadows moved and lurched with each step the hulking guard took. Flickering light touched the tasteless grey stones underfoot and brushed against the pillars lining the hall.

“Come on hurry up!” Barked one of the guards—what must have been a wild mane of red hair peeked out from beneath his helm and bounced with every step he took. He was at least three times as big as my father had been—to big, actually. “We don’t want to miss the victory feast on account of you lot!” He spat furiously, wild eyes rolling.

He had the type of arrogance that only men could get from having one too many victories under their belts and an overly high opinion of what minuscule equipment they were probably stowing under their belts.

The man turned back to his fellow guard. “You would not believe the women down by the southern coast.” The other guard grinned madly.

“Good war campaign then?” He chuckled. “Good—ah—rewards?”

 _War campaign_. He said it as though my village had put up a fight—sure a few men picked up rusty weapons from their ancestors—but there had been no real fight to be had. We knew how to swing scythes—not swords or axes. We knew how to cut wheat down but not men.

“The women were phenomenal—I’m telling you they’d do anything you told them to do—no questions asked.”

The girl in green seemed to shrink back into her dress, rather like turtles shrunk back into their shells, and let out a particularly loud sob. Her mother had probably been one of those women. A lot of the older girls had been one of those women before the gracious All-Father ordered their heads off.

At the end of the corridor there were three great wooden doors—two had gold designs etched into their great iron hinges.

We took the one without gold.

The door swung open into a blistering hot room—a stark contrast to the cool corridor we had just come from.

I stopped shivering and the girl in green stopped sobbing. Even the girl in yellow seemed less lost when the smell hit her.

Beef, chicken, venison were roasting and crackling. Huge boars were roasting on spits, their skin crisped and fat dripped down into the fire below them. There were huge pans filled with greens and fresh bread was resting on the large wooden slabs they baked on. The wheat for that bread had probably come from my village.

There were great wooden tables that were bowing under the weight of the food on them—there were huge tureens of gravy, pounds of pudding, spiced fish, kegs of ale, bowls of fresh greens, towering cakes, and so much more. It was more food than I’d seen in one place in my entire life.

Judging by the look on the boy’s face and his sharp bones it was the most food he’d seen in his entire life.

The girl in green’s stomach rumbled loudly and her eyes went wide as coins.

The other girl didn’t care at all—she just kept staring at things that weren’t there.

The guards didn’t stop to look at the food—they saw it on a regular basis. They didn’t realize what they had.

“Stop staring!” Growled the guard with the red hair.

“Hurry up!” Snarled the other one, brandishing his spear. _Go on,_ whispered an objectively stupid part of me, _impale me and have the maids scrape me off the floor and maybe one of your self-righteous right Aesir will see just enough to reconsider some part of their over-privileged lives._

But I didn’t resist, I just padded after him with the two girls and boy in tow. Now that the shock of food had worn of the girl in green was back to crying.

I wanted to tell her to shut up—that we’d all gone through the same thing and that if the rest of us weren’t annoying everyone around us she shouldn’t—but my mother didn’t raise a complete ass, so I held my tongue. My mother wouldn’t have wanted me to do it—so I wouldn’t.

I passed by the food and resisted the urge to snag an apple as we passed by a bowl of fruit—it was all but begging to be eaten with its perfect glossy red skin.

The women working at the great tables were covered in flour and spices and juices from the meat but none of them seemed to care as they fluttered from one dish to the next, preparing them with a thoughtless ease. Each movement was precise and practiced—it reminded me of the way the men would harvest wheat at the end of the season, each movement seemed like they had been born doing it.

There were men patrolling the tables in food-stained chef’s outfits yelling at the working women and flashing their status—a perfect metaphor for society. We can to a stop in front of a man sitting in the midst of the chaos—he must have been very important if he was afforded a chair.

He didn’t look up at the guards, merely grunting to acknowledge them. “Business?”

“We have some new work hands for you,” said the red-haired guard, as though her were proclaiming that he’d single-handedly taken on an army and won. What he had done was walk a group of kids down a hall and through a kitchen.

The sitting man looked up at us and glared accusingly at the guards beneath lowered bushy brows. “What did you do to these ones? They’re all bloody and it's unhygienic to have in the kitchen.”

“They’re the ones from the war.”

The man simply shrugged the men off. "It's still unhygienic. Do you want blood in the All-Father’s food?” He waved his big meaty hand at the guards, stopping them from answering. “Get out of the kitchen and back to the ceremony, they’ll be missing you.”

I’d never seen two grown men trying to act serious while simultaneously trying to suppress girly squeals. Like all grown men they were off to do what father called: uncouth behavior.

Maybe Heimdall would catch and report them—then again, he hadn’t bothered to stop anything else that had gone wrong, so why would he start now? Father had always said that we would be safe because Heimdall would see our plight and help us. Father was wrong. 

The sitting man stood up, revealing a massive height to rival any soldier’s in the throne room. Why were all men in the capital so large? The sleek and lean figure of the men of my village seemed much more practical when you saw these hulking brutes lumbering around. “You lot follow me and don’t touch anything. We don’t want you ruining the victory feast.”

His deep tenor naturally drowned out the kitchen’s other noises and he led us through the bustling kitchen. “Breakfast tomorrow is before the sun comes up, you’ll have work to do here in the kitchens.”

Excellent—it would give me the chance to spit in Odin’s food. Maybe Heimdall would finally report that crime if he really was all-seeing.

I could do that—helping in the kitchen at home had been a regular occurrence. The girl in green seemed somewhat relieved at this revelation as well.

The boy looked horrified. I understood. Kitchen work was typically seen as women’s work. If some poor man wasn’t used to getting his hands dirty and scrubbing pots until his fingers bled it was understandable that he would cower behind us girls. My mother had always held the firm belief that while men were stronger, women were immeasurably tougher.

The other girl, the silent one, made no indication that she heard.

“You will report to Lydia, the head maid, at breakfasts for your assignments tomorrow. We expect you to work hard and not complain.”

He didn’t need to worry about that—we knew all too well the consequences of disobeying the capitol. We knew them better than anyone.

We followed the men through another plain wooden door and another plain stone hall. Up, up, and up a steep worn staircase with no railing. Servants’ safety wasn’t worth protecting. We were still as expendable as ever to the crown.

The staircase still spiraled upwards out of view and the stairs we had just come from disappeared down below. Who knew how high up we were and how much further us we could go?

My legs were aching, and my lungs heaved when we reached a small landing with an equally small door. It was rickety and wooden and old. We weren’t worth anything here.

“You’ll live here,” the man said by way of explanation, and he left us standing in the too-cold landing. 

The girl in green was, surprisingly, the first to gather herself and swing open the little rotting door. The room was equally small with a sloped ceiling. A small room for the smallest members of staff. We could all fit comfortably in it now, but in a few years, we’d be stooping down.

The floor was made of dirty stone and there were only three rickety beds—one of us would be on the floor. There will still no braziers and it would be freezing in the winter. The blankets had off-white sheets that probably started out as a crisp white a few hundred years ago. They were thread-bare, so they wouldn’t be worth anything in winter—we’d have to rely on wages, if we got any, to buy extra layers for winter.

There were worn old uniforms on each bed—all too big for each of us.

It’d have to do.

I silently claimed the bed farthest from the door—there might, just might, be less of a draft in winter. I slid into bed in my clothes—I had no shoes to kick off and no clean clothes to change into.

The girl in green got into bed in the next bed over and the boy got the bed closest to the door. He’d freeze in winter, but his stupid male pride would stop him from complaining.

The silent girl stared at all of us.

I patted my bed and she slid in next to me. Mother would be proud—I was being nice.

“What are your names?” Asked the girl in green.

“Eric,” said the blonde boy. A generic name—his parents clearly had no creativity. The boy shared his name with every famous hero in every story book and they were all blonde boys. He’d never measure up to the might of his name.

“I’m Gala,” said the girl in green. It meant “lovely singer.” Maybe she’d live up to that name.

They looked at me and the quiet girl.

The quiet girl said nothing.

We gave up on her and Gala and Eric looked at me.

“Sigyn. My name is Sigyn”


	2. Chapter 2

“You will not be late again!” The fat, bearded woman declared.

Lydia was an ass.

How were a few battle-beaten children supposed to be able to wake up before dawn and work? I certainly didn’t know.

Lydia currently had Eric by the ear and she was shaking him back and forth. “I expected this from girls but not from a man!” Eric was hanging limply from his ear as she swung him back and forth. He didn’t dare complain or protest.

None of us did.

Why Eric, someone who was younger than me, was considered a “man” while I was still a “girl” was beyond me.

Lydia rounded on us, her bushy moustache—which could rival that of any of the men in the room—twitching in irritation. “You girls!” She pointed a stubby finger at Gala and the silent girl. “Go help the bread-making station.” Lydia promptly rounded on me, neglecting to explain where the bread-making station was to the girls. Her hand still clasped on Eric’s ear and she dragged his head uncomfortably to the side. Eric had turned an ugly shade of red in embarrassment.

Gala and the silent girl scurried off, not bothering to ask what direction the bread-making station was in. They were just desperate to escape. They had no loyalty—they didn’t even send us a pitying glance as they all but ran away from Lydia.

“You,” she said, shaking Eric for emphasis, “and you,” she added, pinning me under her beady-eyed glare, “will go on cleaning duty today.” With that she tossed Eric to the floor, turned on her heel, and marched off to go shout at someone else.

She didn’t tell us where the cleaning supplies were. She didn’t tell us where we’d be cleaning, for how long, or what to clean it with.

Helpful.

“What do we do?” Eric asked cluelessly. “She didn’t tell us anything.”

My questions exactly—but we couldn’t all be babies. I walked up to one of the women who was elbow-deep in flour and looked like she had been for hours. Her eyes had crow’s feet, so hopefully is she was willing to smile, she’d take pity on some poor little kids.

“Excuse me,” I said, gently tugging on the hem of her shirt—the highest part of her I could reach. Like everyone else who lived here in the capitol she seemed abnormally tall. It didn’t help that I was small for my age.

“Yes?”

She didn’t look away from her flour—which she was now adding water to and kneading. The movement reminded me vividly of my mother in the mornings. What was breakfast without fresh bread?

If I focused hard enough I could see the sunlight streaming through the kitchen windows while I tried kneading until my arms got tired. It was harder work to make good bread than most people realized.

I felt tears welling at the thought of my mother and shook off the feeling. “We were instructed to clean. Where do we get supplies and find out where we are cleaning?”

“Far corner of the kitchen by the great hearths. There’s cleaning supplies and a written roster for the day.”

Well…that was an issue.

I could recognize my own name and do sums and that was about it. Judging by the look on Eric’s face he had the same issue I did.

Farmers needed math before they needed reading, so we learnt math before we started reading.

It hadn’t seemed like a weakness until a few seconds ago.

I left the woman elbow-deep in dough and Eric trailed after me as we scuttled across the kitchen. It was an effort not to get run over or hit in the head by one of the many servants and trays of food.

It seemed ridiculous—that this many people had dedicated their lives to Odin’s household.

It was even more ridiculous that he needed this many.

How could they all be happy serving a murderer?

Maybe they weren’t.

Maybe there were others like me, Eric, Gala, and the silent girl.

I took a few moments to navigate the kitchen floor. Eric had to step onto an overturned bucket to be able to see over the towering great tables and counters to locate the cleaning supplies.

Eventually we gave up on visual navigation and just walked towards the heat of the great fires—we may or may not have crawled under a few tables when we couldn’t figure out a way around them.

Eric let out a few squawks when he wasn’t fast enough to avoid being stepped on.

“Keep up,” I hissed, scrabbling through a pile of potato peels on the floor.

“I’m trying,” spat Eric. For once his male bulk was holding him back instead of earning him automatic respect.

We arrived at the door in time to meet a group of older male servants on their way out. They were dressed in cleaning liveries and armed with buckets and mops. “Excuse me,” I said for the second time the day—I was starting to sound like one of those colorful birds that could mimic some words, there were also some crows that could do it.

The boys’ heads swiveled to look down at us. “Yes?” Said the middle one. He had the beginnings of a sparse beard that he was vainly trying to grow out. The ones on either side of him were still clean-shaven.

“My name is Sigyn,” I gestured to myself with a hand just in case they were stupid, you could never be sure with boys, “and this is Eric.” The boys looked over at Eric measured him up—noticing his lack of height and bulk and labelling him weak. They dismissed him and turned to me.

“We are cleaning today but we don’t know what we are cleaning. Could you please look at the roster and let us know?” I gave him a winning smile—my mother’s smile. My smile worked like a charm and the boys turned to help us.

The middle one walked over to the pinned piece of parchment and started reading off it. “Eric and Sigyn are assigned to The Vault. You will need mops and buckets.” He gave me a winning smile and I couldn’t help but notice that his teeth were slightly off-center. “Don’t…” he said sternly, glowering down at us, “touch the artifacts. No matter how much you want to don’t—they’re dangerous.”

I was already rifling through cleaning supplies by Eric seemed more entranced by artifacts than our work. “What are the artifacts?”

The older boys grinned—a tell-tale sign that the artifacts in The Vault weren’t acquired in a respectful manner. “Odin’s war trophies,” said one of the clean-shaven ones with a menacing grin. “Things he took from battles when he won.”

With that ominous image of Odin, the boys turned and left, awkwardly hauling their buckets and mops.

War trophies—I was one of those. Another stolen object for Odin to lock up and use as he saw fit.

I was an object to him—not a living, breathing, Aesir.

People didn’t become kings because they were nice—they became kings because they were conquerors. In the stories the kings would wither and become evil. They would hurt their own citizens. But upon hearing the peoples’ fears some worthy young hero—usually named Eric, usually blonde, and usually very buff—would slay down the king and install a just rule. It was becoming abundantly clear that the stories got it wrong—past the king hurting his own people nothing happened to deliver justice. The blond Eric I knew certainly wasn’t up to the job.

The Eric I knew also didn’t bother to help me pick out our cleaning supplies or fill the buckets with water from a spicket.

I plunked his bucket and mop down in front of him and shouldered my own.

Eric looked expectantly at me, but I just started tottering away under the weight of my bucket. Who knew what he wanted at the best of times?

“Aren’t you going to help me?” He called out after I’d made it a few steps.

Hell if I was going to do this menial task for him too.

“I already did,” I panted, giving up on carrying the bucket and resorting to dragging it across the stone floor instead. My arms weren’t made for this.

Eric got the message and began to heave his own bucket and mop.

“Where is The Vault?” He panted out—for once, a good question.

“I don’t know,” I said, just as breathlessly. “Ask them.” I jerked my chin at a pair of guards flanking the sides of one of the hallways out of the kitchen.

“You ask.” Eric ordered.

I glared at him. “You do it. I asked last time.”

His bottom lip stuck out petulantly. “I don’t want to ask them.”

“You think I do?”

“You asked the other ones,” Eric argued, his eyebrows furrowing. “They listened to you too.”

“Eric. This is a little-known secret but…. if you use your voice to talk to people—they will listen to you. Now go ask!” I hissed out furiously.

He had the nerve to stomp his foot and set his supplies down with a _thump_. Water sloshed out of the top of his bucket, but he made no move to fix it.

He hesitantly walked towards the towering golden-clad guards. He didn’t go into their sword’s reach though. I wouldn’t have either.

Gala and the silent girl would have shared the sentiment too.

Guards were dangerous.

“Excuse me,” he said. His voice had gone high-pitched like a girl’s. Whether it was to seem less threatening or it had something to do with the way his legs were knocking back and forth—I didn’t know.

The guards swiveled their armored heads and glared down at him. Eric came up to their hips at best. Everyone in this part of Asgard seemed to be abnormally tall.

Eric’s shaking got worse. 

“Can you please tell us how to get to The Vault? We’re cleaning there today.”

There was a beat of silence as the guards considered him—saw his servant’s livery, quaking legs, and skinny arms and dismissed him as a threat.

Thankfully, these guards didn’t seem to be the brutal type.

“Take this hall all the way down and then take the door on your left. Go right until you can’t anymore and on your left will be a large silver door. You’ll know it when you see it.”

“Thank you,” Eric squeaked out before racing back to me as fast as his short little legs could carry him. “I hate you,” he hissed, eyes brimming with tears as he gathered his supplies. “Don’t make me talk to them or go near them again.”

“It’s just talking,” I hissed, hauling my bucket as fast as I could to keep up with Eric as we all but charged down the hall.

“It’s not the talking, it’s _them_. They were probably _there_ —at home.”

Home—we hadn’t talked about it since we’d gotten here. It was a tender subject. Not thinking about home and our families was draining—but it kept us functional. So, we didn’t talk—we didn’t dwell. The silent girl didn’t say anything, and Gala cried herself to sleep.

We were just going to endure.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, watching Eric as he tried to hold himself together. His eyes were rimmed with silver and his chin was trembling.

We were just kids—it didn’t feel like we were young anymore, but we were. We were still just growing.

“Next time let’s go together,” I whispered—a peace offering.

Eric’s chin was still wobbling but he nodded. “I’d like that.”

The guards had been right—you knew The Vault when you saw it.

The silver doors spoke volumes about the wealth of Asgard—of Odin. How many lives and civilizations had been destroyed and robbed to fill the crown’s coffers?

They likely weighed the same as tens of Jotunheim beasts. Their intricate engravings depicted battles and great victories. Odin’s father took center stage—these doors had been made thousands of years ago if they were glorifying him.

There were two guards flanking the entrance. Both were dressed in full golden armor and they were both armed to the teeth. They gave us a cursory glance and immediately disregarded us.

Eric and I hesitated by the doors.

He reached out first and pushed.

The doors—despite their immense weight—swung open easily and soundlessly. The people who cleaned here were good at their job, and especially good at oiling hinges.

The Vault’s inside was as cool and colorless as its doors. The Vault wasn’t meant to be a grand spectacle—it was meant to house weapons. Spoils of war.

Eric and I should be locked in here too.

“Start at the far end and work our way back?”

Eric nodded in agreement and we wordlessly hauled our buckets and mops down the stairs.

The guards pushed the doors closed behind us—we were trapped in here.

There were slots in the walls and each held an exotic spoil of war. I didn’t understand half of them—but Eric did.

He gasped loudly when we passed the first alcove and pointed excitedly at a silver-something that had an ominously glowing circle in its center. “That’s the Tuning Fork!”

I squinted at it. “It doesn’t look like the thing musicians use to tune their instruments. Why does Odin need his own one?”

Eric looked scandalized. “It can summon the Lurking Unknown!”

“Sounds fake, but okay.”

I left Eric gaping at me and I continued past the next few alcoves. One had a large brazier of fire that seemed to have no source. There was a large something in the vague shape of an eye, which Eric gasped at and called the “Warlock’s Eye.” Maybe it summoned the Lurking Eyeballs. There was also a large golden gauntlet that looked a bit impractical and unwieldy. Eric stared at it for a full six heartbeats before catching up with me. There were two other weirdly shaped stone things, one of which took the shape of an opaque cube.

But at the end of The Vault was the centerpiece. Set up in plain sight was a dark blue casket whose insides seemed to be moving. The edges of it were a wrought, smoky metal. It was beautiful—and cold.

The air seemed to freeze as I got closer to the casket.

It felt like winter—the sort of bitter cold that was hard to endure but felt good once you survived it.

Eric seemed frozen to the spot.

“What’s this one?”

“The Casket of Ancient Winters.” That didn’t mean anything.

“Assume I’m stupid and explain it slowly to me.”

“It belonged to the Jotuns. Odin took it during the war from their king after a great battle. It was when Odin lost his eye.”

“I always kind of assumed that Odin was just born without an eye. Him having two eyes would be weird.”

Eric shook his head and tore his attention away from the casket.

We split up and started mopping—Eric worked slower than I did because he’d never done it before. But he was still doing well.

A few hours later my back began to ache and my shoulders cramped. I was past the casket now and next to the fire with no source.

Eric had just reached the casket on his side.

By the time I finished my half and helped Eric finish his we were both coated in sweat and aching. My hands had blistered and bled—Eric’s were worse. My hands were more used to this work than his.

I gave him a brief smile as we finished our job. I couldn’t see outside but it was safe to assume the sun would be setting by now. How long had it been since I’d enjoyed a sunset?

A few days—maybe.

It felt like more than that.

We had just enough time to exchange a glance when we heard the doors swinging open. In a second Eric had us in an alcove behind the golden gauntlet.

Our mops and buckets were pressed up against us as we cramped ourselves into the small space.

Three sets of feet entered—all of them were decked in a casual finery.

Odin walked down the stairs into his vault—one of his children clasped on to either hand. The blond one—Thor—held his right, and the dark-haired one—Loki—held the left.

They stopped in front of the Casket of Winters. Odin was talking about his battles and his enemies.

So this was what he did all day…boast of his accomplishments to an admiring audience.

“The day will come when one of you…will have to defend that peace.” Odin looked down at his sons as he circled around the casket and the boys gawked openly at it.

“Do the frost giants still live?” Loki asked. He was completely focused on his father—not noticing the supernatural cold which the casket emanated.

Thor already seemed to know the answer. “When I’m king,” he began with an arrogant certainty, “I’ll hunt the monsters down and slay them all! Just as you did Father.” The boy seemed breathless—excited by the prospect of war and fighting like all idiots were. He didn’t know pain…or suffering…or the feeling of watching people you knew and loved die at the hands of others.

This prince didn’t understand the cost of a war.

 He didn’t understand the weight of his words as he boasted of his desire to kill an entire race.

“A wise king _never_ seeks out war. But,” Odin paused, and I waited for him to chastise his son, “he must always be ready for it.”

Odin didn’t correct his son—he only left his sons standing by the casket.

The brothers shared a look—the same look that all siblings did before they did something in perfect unison. I’d seen my friends back home do the same thing a hundred times over.

The boys exchanged a grin and raced to catch up with their father. Each one of them grabbed a hand.

“I’m ready father!” Thor insisted. He was a child and he was begging for the responsibility of a kingdom on his shoulders. On some level I could respect that because I couldn’t even tolerate the stress of choosing what to have for dinner on my shoulders.

“So am I,” Loki insisted, shadowing his brother in the way that all younger siblings did.

Odin just shook his head softly at his sons’ eagerness. “Only one of you can ascend to the throne. But both of you were born to be kings.”

Odin headed up the stairs, Thor bouncing up each step still clutching on to his father’s hand. I’d never be able to do that again. Odin had taken that away from me.

Loki followed a little bit behind the two bulkier figures, stalling to take one last look at the casket.

I’d peered my head around the alcove to catch a last glimpse of the princes and Odin. Loki was still standing there.

His eyes widened as he saw me peeking out behind a goblet of fire. They really were a pretty shade of green.

He gave me an uncertain smile and scampered out of The Vault after his father and brother.

Eric slapped me. “What were you _thinking_? He saw you!”

I slapped him back and he blinked owlishly a few times. “ _Don’t_ slap me. Also, what is he going to do? He doesn’t care. He doesn’t know our names. We’re just another pair of servants.”

Eric flinched at the word “servants.” I did too.

“Let’s head back and see if we can get food from the kitchens.”

Eric nodded slowly in agreement. “Alright.”

The hallways were thankfully empty as we started heading back. My back squawked in protest each time my mop or bucket jostled me.

Eric was whimpering by the time we made it back to the kitchens. Finding the cleaning supplies was easier this time around and I followed Eric back towards a series of small tables that other servants were sitting at.

Gala and the silent girl were sitting next to each other and wolfing down soup and bread. MY stomach promptly growled at the sight and smell of food. I hadn’t eaten since before the ceremony yesterday and I was starving.

I took a bowl of beef stew from one of the large sizzling pots that had been set aside for the servants and a roll of coarse brown bread. Eric did the same.

It smelled amazing. It wasn’t my mother’s cooking, but it was so much better than nothing.

We sat down next to Gala and the silent girl and immediately started inhaling our food. “Are we allowed to get seconds?” Eric asked through a mouthful of bread.

Gala shook her head. “I already tried.”

Eric looked distinctly crestfallen, but he immediately went back to inhaling his soup.

The silent girl was the only one who seemed remotely civilized as she ate, the rest of us hadn’t come up for air in a few minutes.

Eric had all-out given up on using utensils.

“Did anything interesting happen to you two today?” Gala asked in a vain attempt to start a conversation. We were all too exhausted to function. Her hands were peeling slightly—she’d probably been washing dishes all day. The silent girl was now all but falling asleep on the table.

“No,” I answered, thinking of the prince that smiled at me. The first smile I’d seen since the massacre. “Nothing interesting happened.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave kudos or a review to let me know what you think.


	3. Chapter Three

Another day—another episode of Lydia’s assholery.

The woman had become more bitter with us the longer we had been here. We weren’t tall enough to reach the high cupboards. We needed to stand on buckets to reach the top of the great tables so that we could cut vegetables. We couldn’t carry full buckets or pitchers.

The silent girl had dropped a pitcher of mulled wine a few days ago and Lydia had snapped. The girl still couldn’t sit down without flinching after the beating Lydia gave her.

“You,” Lydia glowered down at me, she still hadn’t bothered to learn our names, “and you,” she addressed the silent girl, “cleaning duty.”

It was now Eric and Gala’s turn for what we had come to call _the look of doom_. “You two…cup-bearing duty.”

Ahh yes…the latest torture. Seven mornings ago—about two months after arriving here—Odin began to display us poor little orphans like prize horses at meals. We would hold pitchers of wine—only half-full because we couldn’t manage the full ones yet—and make sure that no ones’ glass ran dry. The rich and royal would coo at the sight of us and ask us how we were enjoying our time under Odin’s care. There was no real way to tell them that no one enjoyed slavery.

I was just glad it wasn’t me today.

The men were huge and rowdy, with their loud voices and louder gestures were all to reminiscent of the movements they made before they hit people. A sweeping gesture made by an arm was too similar to the movement for a backhanded hit.

These men were dangerous.

They were trained killers.

They drank enough to kill an ox by the hour.

It was a little impressive, but suspicious enough for me to wonder if the mead and wine were watered down. It seemed like something they’d do in order to drink more in order to boast about how much they were capable of drinking. Mother said that type of man usually had a small _something_. Father never actually let her finish the sentence.

I caught the silent girl’s eye. “Let’s go.”

She peeled herself away from the group—silent as a shadow. She never talked, but what was far more disconcerting was how she never seemed to make _any_ noise. Our oversized boots would slap and flap as we walked, hers seemed to make no noise.

We flitted across the bustling kitchen. I bumped into a few trays and people, but the silent girl seemed to glide through everyone and everything. It was like physical space and objects were completely inconsequential to her.

I scrabbled under a table, through a pile of potato peelings, and out the other side to the secluded closet of all things cleaning. The list was up again today. I couldn’t read any of it.

Eric and I still couldn’t read. I’d figured out what my name looked like, but I hadn’t learned anything.

Gala and the silent girl could read, go figure.

It had just never been a priority for my parents—teaching me to read. As a farming family numbers and math and profit margins were far more important than reading pretty, colorful storybooks about Eric the Strong, or Eric the Brave, or Eric the Brave II.

The silent girl pointed out a name which I assumed was hers—a shame I couldn’t read it, otherwise I could call her something other than ‘you there.’ She then tapped at the location next to her name before gesturing at my name and the location next to it. For all my illiteracy I could see the problem—the squiggles that made up her location were completely different from mine.

Shit.

I couldn’t ask the silent girl what it said—she could read it, but she couldn’t tell me. I couldn’t skip work—Lydia would whip me bloody, I’d seen her do it to a boy who tried running away.

The silent girl brought me out of my panicked haze by dumping a full bucket and a mop in front of me. She hefted her own supplies and beckoned me with a hand.

The silent girl ghosted out of the kitchen and I had no choice but to follow her like a lost puppy.

I caught sight of Gala and Eric across the kitchens clutching onto pitcher of wine that were nearly half their size. Eric looked like he was contemplating drowning himself in the wine in an effort to avoid the stern talking-to Lydia was giving him. Poor Baby.

I’d feel sorry for him, but I was just thrilled that it wasn’t me.

The silent girl led me down a few winding back halls. My footsteps echoed eerily in the stone corridors while the girl’s made no noise as she glided along.

She stopped outside a wooden door—there was no fancy ornamentation, meaning that it didn’t open up into a public space for the royals. She pointed at me and then the door, before shooting me a brief smile and continuing back the way we came.

I gaped at her retreating figure. She’d just dropped me off for work the same way my mother dropped me off for a playdate.

With that thought I pushed my way through the door and into—a study?

There was a massive desk occupying the majority of the space, it was stacked sky-high with papers littered with a fancy, slanted scrawl. There was a half-full pitcher of wine and an empty goblet sitting next to it. The stone walls were lined to the ceiling with great leather-bound tomes, some of them were as large as me. Behind the desk was a large window which had been flung open to let in a brisk breeze. The only form of ornamentation was engravings set in the stone floor—it was a beautiful rendering of Yggdrasil, the tree that connected the nine worlds.

It was nice to see something other than war depictions in carvings.

Thankfully, there was no one occupying the great desk or the immense leather chair behind the desk.

I dragged my attention from the desk and to the floor and shelves—they were fairly clean, but not fit for the castle. Here, “clean” was dirty, and “spotless” was barely acceptable. This stone floor needed to be shining before whoever worked here came back.

My back and arms were shaking by the time the stone floor was gleaming. The sun was starting to set through the windows and the brisk breeze the windows had let in during the morning had turned frigid.

I’d found more than a few interesting things on the various shelves. There were jars filled with different substances. There was an array of knives on the shelves and in the desk drawers. There were of fine make, but they had limited ornamentation. The worn leather handles indicated that they’d seen more than a little use, but the most striking piece was a sword longer than my body. Its handle looked as worn as my father’s scythe, and that tool had been passed down for thousands of years.

That sword wasn’t a pretty thing that men swung around at ceremonies to impress women with their wealth. It was a weapon—worn and responsible for deaths.

This man was a warrior and a scholar judging by the way his weapons and books intermixed freely.

And I knew it was a man because for all of the people I’d seen with weapons, not a single one had been a woman.

I slammed the mop back into its bucket and sighed. If nothing else, I’d grow up with great arm and back strength. I wouldn’t win any competitions against the soldiers, but it could be an extra—

The door slammed open, and not the door I’d come through.

I flattened myself against the wall with my cleaning supplies and tried to blend into the wall.

“Girl!”

I looked up just in time to see a flash of white-blonde hair and broad shoulders before the behemoth of a man settled down into the leather chair. He was probably the rough size and weight of a bear, and probably about as deadly.

“Wine,” came the simple order.

I scurried to fill up his goblet and avoid eye contact, which was easy considering that he didn’t even glance at me.

The man’s shoulders were huge—a product of wielding a sword for far longer than myself or my parents had been alive if his aged face was any indication. People always claimed that age mellowed people, this man was the exception to the rule.

There as no kindness or give in his chiseled face and he wordlessly accepted the wine I’d poured. His eyes were a pale green and none of the quick, precise movements he made to organize his desk were even slightly shaky. He didn’t show his age, just like his weapons.

Father claimed that each harvest made his scythe sharper. Each kill seemed like it sharpened this man’s weapons and wits.

He was a warrior and a weapon if the small scars flecking his hands were anything to go by.

“Is there anything I can get you sir?” I chocked out, trying to flight the urge to shrink back into myself.

“Lord Ragnar, or Lord, to you girl. If you’re going to address me, do it properly.” His voice was probably one of the deepest I’d ever heard.

I’d pay good money to see Odin attempt to go head to head with this man, whoever he was. This man was terrifying.

“Are you done cleaning for the day?” He ground out, briefly drinking the wine I’d poured. He moved with a simple grace, every movement was intentional. Nothing was overdone or dramatic—he didn’t seem bothered by the need to showboat that other men here were afflicted by.

“Yes, Lord Ragnar.”

“Are you new here, girl?”

“Yes, Lord Ragnar.”

“You’re not a native of the capitol. Where are you from?”

“A little farming village.”

He looked at me for the first time. His eyes were a pale green that reminded me a little too much of the color of the poisonous snakes we’d find in the fields back home. “This wouldn’t happen to be the village that refused to pay its tithe and was subsequently wiped off the map, would it?”

My throat closed up and I forced my legs to stop knocking together. “It was, Lord Ragnar.”

He stared through me, analyzing me. “Did your father fight?”

“He tried. He was a farmer. Good at cutting down wheat and not much else.” He quirked a brow at me.

“What killed him?”

“Bravery,” I answered honestly.

Lord Ragnar snorted—the first sign of him being Aesir like the rest of us. “Smart girl. I want you here early tomorrow to clean and bring me breakfast.”

“Sir—My lord,” I corrected, “I’m a kitchen servant. I clean.” It took a little too much will power not to flinch away from the word ‘servant.’ They should be honest with themselves and call me a slave or nothing else.

“No,” he said flatly, leaving no room for argument. “I’m in need of a new cupbearer and this office is the cleanest it’s been in months. I expect you early tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

There was nothing else to say. I had to follow orders.

I had no freedom here.


	4. ChapterFour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo, please let me know what you think of the story. Feedback is always needed and appreciated.

I couldn’t carry all of Lord Ragnar’s breakfast in the morning.

“It’s only three trays girl,” snapped Lydia irritably. “Surely you can manage.” Gala snickered at the dismayed look on my face, Eric and the silent girl didn’t look awake enough to understand what was happening as they wordlessly shoved unsweetened porridge into their mouths.

“The trays are as big as me,” I muttered, dismayed. I looked up at Lydia pleadingly and for once she seemed to see reason and my size—growing up on a small farm in a small village didn’t exactly result in having enough food during the winter months.

Lydia let out a short sigh, “Alright then, girl.” She scanned the surrounding faces quickly and pointed at two older boys, “You two!” Their heads snapped around, and their eyes were wide with fear. The terror Lydia instilled was universal. “You’ll help the girl get these trays up to Lord Ragnar’s study and be quick about it. You’re helping in the training yards today.”

“Yes Lydia,” they chorused. There was no room for argument with her in this palace. Her power was likely second only to Odin’s inside these hallowed walls—built on the lives of people who fell to Odin’s spear, and those who fell to his father’s spear.

No empire became this wealthy without someone paying the price. I’d heard stories of the great battles growing up, but there were no stories about the senseless massacres. There were no stories about _my_ people.

No one wanted to hear my peoples’ stories.

They weren’t fun. They weren’t pretty. There were no heroes for us.

The two boys each hefted a tray, graciously, they left the lightest one for me. I may have been raised on a farm, but I didn’t have the wiry strength that others seemed to have.

The one with brown hair looked down at me, “What’s your name, kid?” I had to crane my neck to meet his gaze. He wasn’t overly tall, but I was certainly overly short. He had a faint mustache starting to grow and judging by the way he continuously smoothed it out—as though to ensure that it had not vanished—he was far too proud of it.

“Sigyn,” I said. The brown haired one gave me an easy smile.

“Nice to meet you, Sigyn. My name is Eric.” Gods above, another Eric. At least I wouldn’t forget his name any time soon.

The blond one hefted his tray and barely spared me a glance, “Bjorn.” I let my gaze sweep over his build—they were larger than my father’s. His name meant “bear”—it was perfect for him considering the spread of his shoulders. He looked like he could swing one of those great battle axes some of the soldiers wielded without a second thought.

“Why’s a little thing like you taking Lord Ragnar his breakfast?” Eric asked, falling into step with me as Bjorn parted the crowds with ease. Those shoulders were useful for more than lifting heavy objects; people all but fled from his path.

“I’m his cupbearer,” I muttered.

 “How did you get to be Lord Ragnar’s cupbearer?” Eric scoffed, looking down his nose at me. He was at least three heads taller than me, which wasn’t really saying much considering the fact that I only came up to the hips of most full-grown men.

It never occurred to me how young I was anymore. I’d known I was young back home, but it had never occurred to me how young. I’d never _felt_ my age.

I’d seen half the years of these older boys and they were still so young compared to the men around us.

“Right place, right time,” I said, keeping my head down and avoiding their gazes.

Bjorn let out a heavy sigh. “Lucky,” he spat. “I’ve applied to be his squire four times in the past two years. The man’s a legend. He’s a warrior.” The feverish gleam in the boy’s eyes said a bit too much about how much he admired the warriors.

“Squire?” I managed, trying to balance the bread and jam while opening a door.

“Yes,” said Eric, throwing out an arm to help me prop the door, “you know, be the right-hand man of the warrior; clean his armor, sharpen his sword, and help him get ready for battle.” He threw me a roguish grin and brandished the butter knife like a sword. “Being a squire and doing well is a one-way ticket out of the servant’s quarters and into the barracks. From being a servant to a warrior. That’s where I want to be.”

It was hard to stop my legs from giving out.

I’d give anything—anything to be cleaning another nondescript hall somewhere in the palace like Eric—the little one—or chopping potatoes with the silent girl and Gala in the kitchen. Anywhere but with these boys who were idolizing the men who’d butchered my family—my home.

My friends’ homes.

They’d left us without family and our town in ruins.

“How did you two end up working here?” I asked; it seemed like a safe question.

“My town surrendered to the capitol after we had an uprising. The All Father was kind enough to take my sister and I in,” answered Eric.

It was all I could do not to drop Lord Ragnar’s breakfast.

I glanced at the blonde boy, he gave me a lazy grin. “Same story. Same village.”

…Bastards.

They were like me.

They were just like me.

And now—now they were just like the rest of them. They were glad—glad—about being given this _opportunity_. Their families had been slaughtered in front of them.

I could still see the spear going through my mother’s chest…through my little brother.

These boys had lived through the same things as me and they bought into Odin’s… _mercy_.

And they wanted, they _wanted_ to become the men in that pretty, gold armor that killed innocents. That killed people who protested.

Their families had been slaughtered and they wanted to become the killers.

I tuned them out for the rest of the walk. They pushed open the door to Lord Ragnar’s office and helped my lay out the trays the way Lydia had told me to.

Bjorn set out two fresh pitchers of wine and clean cutlery. Eric was scanning the books that lined the walls. He paused each time he hit one of the knives.

I swung the door open for them. “Thank you for your help, now, get out.”

The two of them looked down incredulously at me. “You want us to leave?”

“Lord Ragnar will get back here any minute—” Lie. I had no idea what his schedule was, “—and we’ll all get in trouble if you’re here.” True, but not why I wanted them gone.

How could they tolerate this? How could they want to be warriors after this?

Thankfully, that was all it took to send the boys scurrying.

My skin still crawling I set about cleaning. The floor still shone from yesterday, but the shelves and books were dusty. It only took a few minutes to rectify that.

There was nothing else to do.

The windows were open again, letting in the same brisk breeze.

The sun was barely cresting out over the horizon, the others would only just be starting their days and I’d already fulfilled two tasks.

I slumped down in the corner and fiddled with one of the smaller knives. I couldn’t read the inscription on the side, but I recognized one of the symbols from my name—maybe two. It was pretty. I’d never thought of weapons as ‘pretty’ but that was just what this one was. The symbols were pretty, and fine, and loopy and inlaid with gold—the knife’s only ornamentation. It didn’t need anything else. It was the same thing mother always said when she dressed up to look pretty—less is more. Father would always waggle his eyebrows and agree; that earned him a cuff over the head.

The sun had barely cleared the horizon when the wooden door flung open. Clad in a well-fitted and fine red jacket Lord Ragnar swept into the room and wordlessly sat behind his desk before starting on his breakfast.

I wordlessly filled his goblet to halfway—never fill it completely, Lydia had ordered. Lord Ragnar wanted to keep a clear head; the only fighting-age man in the castle who seemed to want that. 

Time ticked by. Bjorn came and went again to take away breakfast and Lord Ragnar did not glance at him. Lord Ragnar did not glance at me either as I went about refilling his glass when it ran dry or cleaned his shelves and floor.

Lunch came and went. He still said nothing and focused on his work.

The sun was stating to dip below the horizon and I was setting out his dinner by the time he said anything.

“Girl.” I swiveled my head to stare at him. He still hadn’t looked away from his work. “Bring me ‘The History of The Greater and Lesser Houses.’”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Where is it?” Lord Ragnar’s eyes finally pried themselves from his work and burned into me. He braced his arms on the table in front of him and stared me down. His green eyes reminded me of the cat that hid in my family’s barn during winter.

“You’ve been cleaning these books all day, girl. You tell me,” he ordered.

My throat closed up and I couldn’t keep my eyes from flicking between Lord Ragnar and the broadsword that sat inches from his hand…or the knife tucked into his belt.

“I don’t know, my lord,” I whispered, fighting back a stutter. My hands wrung themselves out as Lord Ragnar continued to glower at me, his thin mouth set in a disapproving line.

“You don’t know,” He repeated, disdain dripping off of every word. His eyes flickered over me, studying me. “Tell me, girl, why did I choose you as my cupbearer? There are hundreds of other servants in this castle. Why did I choose you?”

Servant—please, call me a slave and be done with it. “I don’t—I don’t know, my lord,” I gasped out, failing to stifle my stutter.

He left out an exasperated puff, “So observant and yet you fail to understand the simplest things.”

I couldn’t stop a scowl from creeping onto my face. The corner of his mouth twitched upwards briefly. “You’re more observant than half of my trained men. You cleaned my floor better and got rid of every last speck of dust because you noticed them. No one noticed them before.” He leaned back into his chair and his eyes began plucking me apart. “Even now, your eyes are tracking my hands and my knives and my sword. You aren’t missing anything about me or my weapons—it’s a trait soldiers train for years to have and here you are…a servant girl with a penchant for seeing things rather than just watching them.”

He relaxed back into his chair, moving his hand farther from his sword and closer to his knife. “So how is it,” he continued, “that a girl who notices more than most is unable to locate a simple book after staring at the shelves all day?”

I steadied my wringing hands and met his flashing green gaze—he was all predator. All warrior. I could see why those boys idolized him. “I—I can’t—”

“Speak up, girl!” He snapped.

“I can’t read, my lord,” I forced out, same bubbled up, white-hot in my chest and pricked at my eyes. I blinked away the silver lining my eyes. My illiteracy had never seemed like a weakness, but now, before a man who seemed to calculate everyone around him, it was hard to imagine anything that could make me more of a disappointment.

He blinked at me, his mouth still set in its stern line. “Be prepared to stay here late tomorrow night girl. Order extra dinner for me, you will be eating here. No cupbearer of mine will be illiterate.” He picked up his quill once again and continued to work through the never-ending pile of papers on his desk.

“The book I want is the red leather-bound one on the middle shelf right across from me.” I fetched it and his office descended into silence once again.

Dinner came and went, and I still refilled Lord Ragnar’s goblet and lit the candles and braziers in his office.

When my eyes began to droop Lord Ragnar gave me a flick of his wrist in dismissal. His office was gleaming, and his shelves were in order. It was even cleaner than yesterday.

I left without a single word and Lord Ragnar did not look up from his work as I left.

The stone-cold servants’ corridors wound through the castle, thankfully, someone had already been through to light the braziers. I padded along and my too-large boots flapped and clapped against the stones with each step. I needed to learn how the silent girl was able to keep her infernal over-sized boots quiet; mine drove me mad.

The kitchen was busy as ever. The pots and pans used to prepare this night’s feast were being scrubbed and the bread for tomorrow’s breakfast was being left out to rise. Gala, Eric and the silent girl were inhaling their food in our usual spot. I waved briefly at Gala and she shot me a brief smile as I wove through the tables to find Lydia—as usual, she was in the middle of the chaos screaming orders.

I shouldered my way through a heard of cooks and found myself at Lydia’s side. I tugged on her sleeve—it was the highest thing I could reach—and fought the urge to freeze when her stern brown eyes found me.

“What is it, girl? I don’t have time for nonsense,” she growled out, a few strands of hair slipping free from the braided knot on her head—it had clearly been a hard day.

“Lord Ragnar has requested an extra set of cutlery with his dinner tomorrow and extra food as well.” She scowled down at me, but lost some of her annoyance.

“Is he dining with someone?”

“Yes.” _Me_.

Thankfully, Lydia asked no further questions and simply nodded. “I will see to it girl, go rest and eat,” she ordered.

I scampered away the second she dismissed me—I didn’t need to spend more time around her than necessary. Gala and Eric were still sitting at the table, the silent girl had left.

Gala pushed a bowl of stew towards me. There was no point in asking what was in it, the answer was always the same; little of this and a little of that, meaning leftovers. I wolfed it down.

“How was your new assignment?” Eric asked through a mouthful of stew. His manners earned him an elbow in his side for Gala. I shrugged.

“Lord Ragnar mostly ignores me, so I can’t complain.”

Gala flashed me a slight smile—she was the only one of us four who’d managed anything close to a smile. Bless her. “Better than having Lydia wailing at you for not peeling potatoes the _correct_ way?”

I quirked an eyebrow at her. “There’s a correct way?” Gala and Eric snorted in unison.

“There’s a special tool, apparently, for peeling things,” Gala muttered disbelievingly. “People here don’t know how to use knives.”

“It looks kind of like my dad’s old razor,” Eric pondered. “It’s weird; they just couldn’t use knives like normal people.”

“People here are generally strange. The pretty golden halls do peoples’ brains in,” I muttered. Eric let out a snort. “Did I tell you that the two crown prices ruined the freshly waxed floors yesterday? They didn’t even apologize.”

“Please tell me that they slid down the length of the hall,” Gala pleaded, her eyes dancing.

Eric smirked, “Yeah, the blonde wiped out, went crashing straight into one of the pillars.”

Gala snickered and the corners of my mouth nearly turned upwards at the mental image of the primly dressed boy slamming into a pillar at full-tilt. “Long live the future king. Make sure we get in touch with whoever writes the history books and ensure that at least one chapter is dedicated to the future king slamming face-first into a pillar.” She elbowed Eric. “It sounds like something you would do.”

Eric’s jaw unhinged. “And she wouldn’t?” He protested, gesturing incredulously towards me. Gala smothered a smile and shook her head. “No. She’s the cupbearer for a fine, upstanding lord. She’s respectable. You’re a crazy kitchen boy who compares potato peelers to his father’s razors.”

I rolled my eyes at the two of them as I finished my stew. “You’re both ridiculous.” I set my bowl into the monstrous pile in the sink. Bjorn was one of the people elbow-deep in dishes.

I waved briefly at him and he smiled down at me. “Hello, little cupbearer,” he called out.

“Hello Bjorn.”

“How do you find Lord Ragnar?” He asked, the boys around him perked up at the mention of my lord. Apparently, he was important. It wasn’t hard to believe.

“Stoic,” I supplied, “scary.” The boys nodded in unison.

“He is,” muttered Bjorn. “Did he say anything about me or Eric?” He asked hopefully. I shook my head and watched his face fall. “He didn’t say anything except ‘refill my goblet.’” The boys all snorted and shook their head and bought my lie. Good on them; not looking too closely at anything the little orphan girl had to say.

That was my new gift and curse; I was invisible.


End file.
